{"id":576579,"date":"2010-05-24T10:45:05","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T14:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/europe-crisis-mortgage-rates-2010-5"},"modified":"2010-05-24T10:45:05","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T14:45:05","slug":"europes-crisis-has-actually-been-awesome-for-the-average-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/576579","title":{"rendered":"Europe’s Crisis Has Actually Been Awesome For The Average American"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"European<\/p>\n

The Federal Reserve propped up the housing market after the financial crisis by buying mortgage-backed securities in the market, in a bid to keep mortgage rates low for American homeowners.<\/p>\n

Yet when the $1.25 trillion buying program came to an end during the last week of March, many market observers worried that mortgage rates would rise, hurting the U.S. housing market.<\/p>\n

It turns out that mortgage rates are still extremely low despite the passing of the Fed’s buying program.<\/p>\n

Why? One unexpected reason is that Europe’s financial problems have sent droves of investors into U.S. treasuries, in a ‘flight to safety’. This has depressed U.S. treasury yields, through rallying treasuries, which has flowed through into lower mortgage rates for American homeowners.<\/p>\n

WSJ:<\/a><\/p>\n

Many in the industry now say rates could drift as low as 4.5% this summer from 4.86% now, instead of rising to 6% as some economists projected, making for significantly lower payments for Americans buying homes or refinancing their mortgages.<\/p>\n

Refinance business “exploded” last week, says Jeff Lazerson, chief executive of Mortgage Grader, a brokerage in Laguna Niguel, Calif. “It’s schizophrenic. We all had this expectation of higher interest rates and no more refinances.” He says he helped a borrower lock in a 30-year loan with a 4.25% fixed rate last week, the lowest in his 24 years in the business.<\/p>\n

Rates on 30-year mortgages averaged 4.84% last week, according to a survey by mortgage-insurance titan Freddie Mac. Rates were quoted late Friday at 4.86%, the lowest since December 2009, according to a survey by financial publisher HSH Associates, and down from a high of 5.27% for the week ended April 9. Rates on 15-year mortgages averaged 4.24% last week—the lowest since Freddie began its survey in 1991.<\/p>\n

Thus Europe’s pain has oddly created a broad-based form of economic stimulus for the U.S., since it saves families around the country money on their mortgage payments. It’s a great time to refinance.<\/p>\n

Join the conversation about this story »<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Federal Reserve propped up the housing market after the financial crisis by buying mortgage-backed securities in the market, in a bid to keep mortgage rates low for American homeowners. Yet when the $1.25 trillion buying program came to an end during the last week of March, many market observers worried that mortgage rates would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6205,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6205"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}